t demoniacal clamour.

Now an idea takes hold on the minds of these ferocious legionaries, and
it is passed like lightning round the ranks. Those in the forefront haul
up the bodies of the slain, and, holding them to them, stagger forward,
thinking to make a buckler of the dead for the living. But the terrible
rifles of the slavers drive their unerring missiles at that short range
through dead and living alike, and corpse is heaped upon corpse in
ghastly intertwining.

In the thickest of the tumult Hazon is here, there,
everywhere--directing, encouraging, restraining. But for the demon-glow
in the black eyes staring from the pale, set face, the man might have
been made of marble, so little trace of emotion of any kind does he
display. Laurence, too, is wary and self-contained, though getting in
here and there a telling shot. Holmes, on the other hand, is firing away
as fast as he can load. So far not a man has been injured. The
assailants are not quite within spear-throwing distance yet.

"Ammunition hold out? Oh, yes, we have plenty of that," is Hazon's reply
to a rapid, low-toned query on the part of Laurence. "But it's time they
turned tail. Isandhlwana was nothing to this."

But now, with a deafening, vibrating roar the Ba-gcatya, massing
suddenly, hurl fully one-half of their force upon the point directed by
Lutali. They surge up the slope in one dense charge of lightning
swiftness. Bullets are hailed upon them. They waver not. The hands of
the defenders are skinned and blistered by contact with the breeches of
their own rifles, so hot have these become through quick firing, and
still the firing is not quick enough. Stumbling, leaping, flying over
the defences they come--a great cloud of dark, grim faces, and bared
teeth, and protruding eyeballs. They spring upon the defences, then over
them. The whole might of the redoubtable foe is pouring into the natural
fortress.

[Illustration: STUMBLING, LEAPING, FLYING OVER THE DEFENCES THEY COME.]

Now ensues a scene the like of which might be paralleled, but hardly
surpassed, by some lurid drama of hell. In jarring shock they meet,
those within and those, till now, without--the savage legionaries of
"The Spider," and the no less savage and equally determined
slave-hunters. The Wangoni, seeing their chance, have sprung forward to
meet and roll back the assailants. But they themselves are beaten down
by the broad shields, ripped with the terrible stabbing spears of th